When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on - series polygamy - until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimension to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.
-- Tom Robbins
pretty stupid it seems. apparently some guy named jason fortuny decided to do a little experiment. hey, i'm all for experiments! but instead of compiling the results and providing the simple answer, he went a little too far...
On Monday, a Seattle web developer named Jason Fortuny started his own Craigslist experiment. The goal: "Posing as a submissive woman looking for an aggressive dom, how many responses can we get in 24 hours?"
sex baiting prank on craigslist affects hundreds via waxy.org
i'll leave the details and some of the fallout to the article linked above, but i definitely want to go on record and say "what an asshole!" what value did he think he was bringing to the world for doing that?
it is one thing to say n number of people responded. even doing a less than accurate breakdown based on other factors like how many actually included pictures, claimed to be married, and a variety of other differentiators. but to publish not just their responses, but their email addresses and not filtering out clearly private/personal information like phone numbers! like many of the original comments suggest, i too, hope the guy gets his ass sued off.
before reading the comments, which were thankfully cut off early else i'd probably still be reading them, i knew... just knew... one person would chime in saying those that responded "got what they deserved" and that they'd point to some married guy, label him a cheater which in the minds of many means there is nothing you can't do to the person that isn't justifiable. and it didn't take long for that comment to appear.
what floors me is that the commenter assumes that the married guy is actually cheating. perhaps his wife isn't into that kink -- and if you read what the ad was looking for, it wasn't missionary -- and that she told him to go get this jollies elsewhere. or that he isn't in an open relationship.
regardless, that isn't even the point. jason posted the information (including phone numbers and pictures sent) of everyone. this includes single men (and women) that have every right (moral or otherwise) as a concenting adult to respond to the ad and pursue... ummmm... the adventure. the fact of the matter and the question it raises is where did jason think he got the right to publish this information? he'd already committed a fraud by claiming to be a woman -- well, unless he secretly is, i don't know the guy, gal, whatever...
for those that sit and justify his little experiment, i like the question asked by one of the commenters. would it have been ok to post all the same information for respondents of an ad to sell a bicycle? it would be ok to put their names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses out there? of course not! what i think jason was relying on was the fact that responding to an ad like his has a certain social stigma attached. that those being exposed would be viewed as bad people and the "moral majority" would side with him for exposing those cheaters and perverts. bzzzt. i don't think so jason.
whether i agree with who responded or what they were responding to, the fact of the matter is they corresponded with whom you (jason) led them to believe they were writing to and it was done so with the expectation that it was not going to be published. this wasn't a case of not protecting the information, it is a case of abusing it. he purposefully published it for reasons i can only guess at and i hope he has to pay the proverbial piper for his mistake.
hope he enjoys his 15 minutes of fame.
i haven't done a meme or quiz in a while and with a few minutes break i couldn't resist giving this one whirl. the results were interesting.
73 | |
8 | |
48 | |
14 | |
36 |
Bebo, MySpace Layouts and hi5 by Pulseware Survey Software |
it struck me, perhaps a week ago, that there sure are a lot of television shows on now that try and deal with people's relationships. aside from the oprah and dr. phils of the programming world there is:
i've shared this observation with a couple people and while it can make for some interesting conversation, i'm always left wondering why these shows are on. sure, people like to see the lives of other people (real or fantasy) and certainly like to see when their lives are more fucked up than our own, but why this trend and why now? are relationships having more trouble now than they did 10, 20, 30 years ago? are we just more public about it? are people today more willing to air their proverbial dirty laundry for a few minutes of tv-time? there are certainly a lot of blogs that do that, but they are often far more anonymous or at least can be.
a friend that recently got married told me about his new father-in-law being at the wedding and brought his 4th wife. my first thought was everyone can mess up once. hell, even twice. but by the 3rd time you should have a clue that something needs work. of course we all probably think we aren't the problem. maybe these shows are showing us that w e are the problem?!?
divorce rates are up and the prospect of successful second marriages is also pretty bleak especially when drugs, booze, and infidelity are thrown into the mix. maybe it is our growingly ocd culture of needing instant gratification. the i want happiness now and it isn't there roaming around to find it. and of course when found it is sucked up and we want more or better. i think i've been guilty of that at times.
i work with a number of people from other countries and when discussing how marriage works in india i found it quite interesting. why? well, at least i would have expected arranged marriages to have a greater failure rate than ones where we pick our own spouses. maybe our families have a better sense of who would be a better mate for us than we know for ourselves?!? while talking about these things a bit i remarked to one fellow that it seems like a lot of the marriages are more like "business relationships". i honestly expected him to agree, but he did not. "no, not at all", he said. what struck me as a bit odd was that these relationships were built on the idea of simply making what they have work. i'm sure some pine for romance, undying love, and all the impractical things we think of with a "perfect relationship", but in the end that isn't what they are working towards. it is building the family and making life good (or at least acceptable) for themselves.
after the discussion, the pessimist in me figured that you would never seen an indian man (or woman) be completly distraught should their spouse pass away. sad, sure, but not in the throw yourself off a cliff sort of way. no hollywood bollywood romances there i suppose. the humorist in me figures that they are ok with that since there is always the next life.
so it all loops back. are these televison shows a reflection of how our society is today -- a lot of people with a lot of fucked up relationships and now comfortable enough with it that we can show it to the world -- or are these shows and others simply providing fuel to make us think our lives are fucked up?
maybe it is a conspiracy? maybe there are a bunch of out of work therapists that have decided to put on shows to generate more work for themselves? i be the whole home decorating show trend has improved home depot's bottom line. people see interesting ideas and try to do them too or are simply envious of the homes of others and find the need to improve theirs. in the end, i'd bet the bottom line of anything home improvement wise has gotten better since these shows aired. of course one can argue that the homes have improved too, but that is a matter of taste... 'cause damn some of those improvements simply aren't.
maybe therapists and shrinks have caught on to this and have decided that once enough people start seeing the problems of others and that they are getting help (if you can call it that), that viewers, too, will flock to therapists to aid them in their relationship woes. it's a theory. *grin*
men. the time of the strong pimp hand has gone. run for your lives.
and for the record, the pimp hand comment is a joke. violence in a relationship is simply wrong and can not and should not be tolerated. period.